The Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers faced off in the Super Bowl last weekend. All eyes were on the star-studded matchup, to say the least.
After one of the most competitive games in recent memory, fans were anticipating what the ratings for the game would be. The ratings revealed that the big game had a historic amount of viewers, according to Variety.
“The Feb. 11 Super Bowl game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers brought in an average of 123.4 million viewers — the highest number of people watching the same broadcast in the history of television,” Variety wrote.
Nickelodeon Broadcast Helped Historic Viewership
Per Variety, the traditional broadcast on CBS garnered the largest audience ever for a single network at 112 million. Another contributor to the high rating was the alternate broadcast on Nickelodeon.
“112 million of those viewers were tuned into the CBS broadcast. The largest audience ever for a single network,” Variety added.
“The rest were measured across Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports, and NFL digital properties including NFL+. Per Paramount Global, Paramount+ saw record-breaking viewership that made Sunday the most-streamed Super Bowl ever, but exact data regarding streaming views isn’t available.”
Fans on Twitter sounded off on the unorthodox broadcast on Nickelodeon.
“The fact that this is actually informative commentary and there were a couple of times where I (a casual football watcher) learned something from the Nickelodeon Broadcast,” another user added.
“1.2 million Nielsen viewers chose the Nickelodeon broadcast of the Super Bowl which means 1.2 million Nielsen viewers chose the correct broadcast of the Super Bowl,” another said.
Eagles, Chiefs Super Bowl Held Previous Record
The Chiefs and 49ers broadcast overtook the highest ratings title. The previous standard was last year’s Super Bowl which featured the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
“Before this, the biggest telecast of all time was last year’s Super Bowl game between the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles,” Variety said.
“It was initially named the third most-watched. Ranking behind the 2015 and 2017 Super Bowls which brought in 114.4 million and 113.7 million viewers. But Nielsen later caught errors in their measurement. That raised the tally from 113 million to a record-breaking 115.1 million viewers. Sunday’s game improved on that number by 7%.”